In the face of history: some ancients wait for us to discover them

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By JOE CLARKE

Coming from the U.K. to live by the Mediterranean has been an escape to something new: the incredibly old.

My wife, an ancient languages scholar, can read Luwian, the tongue of an obscure civilisation that made its home here in Cilicia.

It’s different in London. History crowds you. It jostles your drinking arm and spills your pint. Celtic hordes shove you on Oxford Street, Norman policeman move you along and Saxon shop keepers ignore you. Shakespeare edits the local gazette, Dr Johnson corrects your language at school and Pepys sells you slightly charred parmesan cheese.

In Rough Cilicia, history waits for you to find it. It camps in the mountains, enjoying the view. It lies in the sea, letting the waves wash away the millennia. It sits by rivers and under cliffs and in the cool of caves. It watches you. It remembers Cleopatra’s beauty and Alexander’s ambition.

The remote history of Anatolia has made me risk my neck to get to it.

Take Adam Kayalar. I drive up a small mountain road. Park in a clearing. Descend steps cut into a sheer rock face two thousand years ago and repaired only where crampons and ropes would be needed. Immaculate round holes are cut where more sensible people placed handrails. Fifteen minutes of falling down a mountain I come to a ledge, twenty foot wide.

Look up. Carved into the inaccessible rock face above me are Roman reliefs, celebrating the dead. Warriors, mothers, families, hunters, children.

This was the site of an ancient death cult. In the glorious sunlight, with a view of a valley cutting its way down to the sea, the location acknowledges death in the face of life and celebrates life in the face of death.

What has ancient history in a new place made you do?

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Joe Clarke figures his Irish roots and Turkish citizenship make him a London Irish Turk. The London native lives in Tasucu with his wife and daughter, teaches English at a local school and misses his eldest daughter still in England.
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  5. Is that a pain cry? What we want to hear about death

Tagged as: Adam Kayalar, Alexander the Great, Anatolia, ancient civilization, ancient history, Celtic, Cleopatra, death cult, Dr Johnson, England, in your face, Ireland, Irish, Joe Clarke, London, Luwian, Mediterranean, Norman, Oxford Street, Pepys, Roman, Rough Cilicia, Saxon, Shakespeare, Tasucu, Turk, Turkey, United Kingdom

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  • http://www.bazaarbayar.blogspot.com Catherine Bayar

    Good point, YazarC – I always thought it was curious the locals in Selcuk cared little about the Greco-Roman ruins of Ephesus, until someone said “It's not our history – it's yours” meaning European of course. And my father-in-law put it even more clearly when we found a ancient bit of Ionic capital in our garden. I was ecstatic, but he was blase. “So I'll carve something today and bury it – 2000 years from now whoever is living here can dig that up too”.

    And let's not forget all those traveling and writing ladies for the perspective they offered about the cultures they visited, sometimes with lasting effect, as in the case of Gertrude Bell!

  • http://www.bazaarbayar.blogspot.com Catherine Bayar

    Well said, Tara!

    Like Tara (and working with her), I aspire to do the same thing – translate ancient skills into modern usage, by interpreting the language of craft. Thanks to the wealth of Turkish culture and the skills of 'everyday' women, we'll have plenty of new ways to express this heritage.

  • http://www.bazaarbayar.blogspot.com Catherine Bayar

    A colorfully written post, Joe, with descriptive phrases so well done I'm right there with you, wherever you go.

    The draw of ancient history currently has me living among tourists, on top of the partially excavated Byzantine Magnaura Palace, in the shadow of the Hagia Sophia. That our small room on the roof is nearly unlivable is of little concern, when I have the mouth of the Bosphorus to contemplate out the window.

    Perhaps because I grew up in a place where 'ancient history' is a string of missions built by Spanish conquerors and scant remnants of the Native Americans who thrived there before their arrival, my travels around the world have almost always been to seek out a new place's most ancient sites. Even better, to try to piece together the layers of civilizations that place may have, and how they relate to the people living there now.

    Little wonder I'm so captivated by Turkey…it would take decades to explore this land, and a lifetime to understand it!

  • kari m.

    This post spoke to me too, thank you Joe. Ancient history usually 'speaks' to me in new places and that has inspired most of my travels. During a few years I worked mainly as a tour guide in different countries. This gave the wonderful opportunity of tapping into the historical vibes surrounding us where we journeyed — and by telling stories as an orator that enabled both me and my clients to use the imagination in most fulfilling ways. We used to rebuild the ancient glory of what today only can be seen as archaeological ruins, through imaginative travels. Those were some of the most colorful and adventurous years of my life.

  • taraagacayak

    As my History of the English Language professor reminded us – languages are considered dead not when they are no longer spoken, but once they no longer change. The history of place inspired me to start a business selling modernized versions of ancient crafts from my new home in Turkey. To preserve their spirit and heritage by finding a way to innovate them into something that would be appealing to today's sensibilities.

  • Sean Paul Kelley

    What has ancient history made me do? Oh, that's a long, long story. But it's carried me from Hadrian's Wall in England to the caves of Ellora in India. I've sipped coffee in the shade of an Axum obelisk in Ethiopia and sucked tea through a sugar cube in the shadows of Persepolis. Ancient history has cursed me and dragged me all over this planet of ours in search of it. Great post and thank you!

  • http://www.skaiangates.com Yazarc

    I've been thinking on the gap between the modern inhabitants and the ancient history a lot recently. I used to put it down to the history not being that of the Turks themselves but having looked at more recent history I see the same thing. (The exception to this rule is Ataturk of course.) Perhaps it's the nomadic nature, places held mystical value but could not be 'kept' and so were left to be reinvented again and again. Or perhaps there is so much struggle to survive and have a decent life that ancient history was last on the agenda. I think we owe a lot of English and Irish history to the curation of middle-class gentlemen from the 1700's on, men who had a living and could afford time and money to indulge in history.
    Thought-provoking post.

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